1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to manually transportable pouches or cases for holding and carrying various articles or items, and more particularly to such portable pouches or cases having pockets, sleeves, dividers or other receptacles for receiving and carrying generally planar tool items, such as circular saw blades, and accessories therefore.
2. Discussion
Although a wide variety of portfolios, cases and other such containers have been devised for holding and organizing circular saw blades, these prior art carriers frequently have been found to be lacking in terms of the ease or convenience with which blades are stored or removed by the user. In addition, many of these carriers have been designed for a very specific application or for a narrow range of particular applications and have not been well suited for use in other applications. Still other carriers have been found to be too large or cumbersome for convenient transportation or use when the user is not restricted to a particular workstation.
A number of the above-mentioned prior art holders or carriers have been fabricated from a rigid plastic material as a generally clam-shaped structure. Several of these devices have very limited storage capacity and as such, frequently necessitates the use of several of such cases to store a user's repertory of blades. Often times, these cases are not conducive to storing the blades in a manner which permits them to be readily removed from the case. Other cases do not sufficiently confine the blades and permit the edges of the blades to rattle against one another or against any tools which may be stored with the blades. The rattling of the blades against one another often dulls portions of the blades, necessitating that the blade be prematurely resharpened or scrapped. This problem is particularly costly when the blades are tipped with carbide since carbide tipped blades are frequently expensive to both purchase and resharpen and because carbide is brittle and may be easily cracked, thus increasing the likelihood of damage to these blades as compared to blades made from high speed steel.
Accordingly, the present invention seeks to address these concerns by providing a folding pouch-type carrier or case that is adapted to store blades in a confined manner to prevent them from being damaged during the use or transport of the case. The present invention also addresses these concerns by providing a folding case that may be conveniently and easily mounted to a wide variety of external mounting members or structures present at a worksite. The preferred case is also adapted for conveniently holding, storing and transporting other small articles such as blade wrenches.